


non-player character

by superstringtheory



Category: The Umbrella Academy (TV)
Genre: Coughing, Diners, Fever, Gen, Hurt/Comfort, Laryngitis, POV Outsider, POV Third Person Limited, Sick Klaus Hargreeves, Sickfic, Slice of Life
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-09-05
Updated: 2019-09-05
Packaged: 2020-10-10 07:14:04
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,766
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20524040
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/superstringtheory/pseuds/superstringtheory
Summary: Klaus gets laryngitis.





	non-player character

**Author's Note:**

  * For [painting](https://archiveofourown.org/users/painting/gifts).

It’s not like the midnight shift at the local iHOP has ever been anything other than a vacillation. It ebbs and flows, the crazy. One night can be an apex of people strung out on meth and the next a valley of second-shift workers getting coffee and pancakes and reading Vince Flynn on Kindles. It can even vary within the same shift. 

  
Her name tag says “DAISY” but that’s not really her name. It just works for when she’s here. The iHOP is not a place you intend to work long-term, and so what if people tip DAISY and she picks up a paycheck under someone else’s name? 

“What can I get you?” she asks the two guys-- a couple? Brothers? It can be hard to tell at first-- and the shorter one kind of wordlessly hushes the other one, who’s taller, with wild curly hair. 

“Coffee for me,” he says, “tea for that one-- and we’ll need a minute for the rest.” 

“Sure,” she says, and goes off to fill their mugs of joe and tea. The mugs are older than she is. Made in USA stamped on the bottom. They don’t make things like that anymore. Everything she owns is CHINA or VIETNAM or MEXICO. Third world countries she’s never going to see. She can’t even afford to leave this state. 

The tall, skinny one is having some sort of coughing fit when she comes back, and the shorter one catches her eye and mouths “Sorry.” 

“It’s okay,” she says. “You got the crud, honey?” 

These guys are for sure older than her, but part of this job is diminutives. Calling people honey or sweetie or sugar. It comes with the territory. 

The tall guy doesn’t say anything, just looks at her kind of balefully. His hair is all mussed up as if he just got out of bed and he looks rosy around all his edges like he might be feverish. 

“He’s got laryngitis,” the shorter one says. “He was coughing too much to sleep so… here we are.” He leans back in the sticky vinyl booth like he owns the place, arms stretched out wide, Jesus on a makeshift cross. Some martyr that’d be. 

“Huh,” she says. “That’s too bad. Tea should help.” She thumps the mugs down in front of them. “I’ll give you another minute.” 

She only has one other table-- an old guy reading a paper and nursing a coffee-- so she busies herself with refilling salt shakers and straightening paper placemats. She gives the two guys a few more minutes and then catches the eye of the shorter one, who has a slick haircut. If these two are a couple, he’s definitely the top, no doubt about it. 

“What can I get you?” she asks them, and Mr. Slick orders for the both of them- French toast and bacon for him, and a chocolate milkshake for his brother/friend/boyfriend. 

“It’ll feel good on your throat,” Mr. Slick says across the table, and hands their menus back to her. “Trust me.” 

Tall and Skinny looks like he wants to argue but is caught off guard by a pair of sneezes, which sound like they hurt. He winces afterwards, and Mr. Slick makes a sympathetic face. 

“Even your sneezes sound kind of hoarse,” he says to Tall and Skinny, who seems utterly unamused. 

She realizes then that she’s been standing there watching them and not taking their order back to the kitchen, so she hustles to get it put in. Not like there’s going to be a backlog at this time of night, but she wants to keep the routine flowing. 

When she gets back from the kitchen, Mr. Slick catches her eye again. 

“Hey,” he says when she comes over, and she can see him carefully reading her name tag. “Daisy. Do you have a pen we could borrow for a little bit? Klaus is getting antsy.” 

Klaus. Now that’s a name you don’t hear every day. Well, neither is Daisy, for that matter. 

“Sure,” she says, and gives them her spare from her pocket. 

“Here,” Mr. Slick says, and hands the pen over to Klaus, who immediately starts scribbling on the paper placemat. God, what she wouldn’t give to just lean over a little bit and-- no. She has to stop getting into customer’s conversations. It’s unprofessional. 

This job is just so  _ boring _ sometimes, though, and maybe she can bring the silverware she needs to roll over to a nearby table and she can keep eavesdropping. Yeah. That seems like a good plan. 

So that’s what she does, and it’s fascinating to hear essentially a one-sided conversation between two people in person. It’s like watching a phone call. 

For instance, right now, Mr. Slick is saying, “I’m getting pretty sick of ‘Ben says,’ Klaus. It’s a pretty convenient thing to say whenever you need someone to agree with you. I don’t give a shit if he’s right there next to you. I don’t care if he hears it, too. You can’t keep playing Bobbsey Twins with him, trying to manifest Dave and getting yourself all run down. This is why this happened, you know?” Mr. Slick throws a hand up at Klaus, and then takes a fortifying swallow of coffee. 

Klaus looks like he desperately wants to say something, but when he opens his mouth, nothing comes out except a really awful sounding cough. 

“Aw, fuck,” Mr. Slick says. “I’m sorry. Don’t try to talk. It’s okay.” He reaches across the table and pats Klaus on the hand, and Klaus’ hand skitters away. He’s scribbling again, a jagged script that curls around the edges of the placemat. She’s no graphologist, but it looks like he’s annoyed. 

“Look, I’m sorry I said that,” Mr. Slick says. “That was uncalled for. It’s just--” he breaks off, as Klaus pushes the placemat across the table at him. He pauses as he reads. “Okay, yeah, I deserved that. I’m sure Ben agrees.” He laughs, once, without humor, and then drains the rest of the coffee. 

She takes the opportunity to come back over to their table and ask if he’d like a refill. He says yes, and his eyes linger on her face for just a second longer than is comfortable. These two guys-- there’s something a little weird about them, but she can’t quite put her finger on it. 

Of course, that’s when she notices that her old guy has left, so she goes to bus his table and collect her two crumpled dollar bills from underneath his mug. She sighs. At least listening to these two guys has been interesting. 

She realizes then that their food is probably ready, so she jogs to the kitchen to get it. When she brings it back, Mr. Slick is looking long-suffering-- the placemat is filled with handwritten text, overlapping itself-- and Klaus is hacking up a lung. No wonder he lost his voice with a cough like that. 

She sets the plate and glass down in front of them and asks if they need anything else. 

“No, I think we’re good for now. Thanks, Daisy.” Mr. Slick sends her off with a noncommittal smile, the kind she’s sure he gives girls every day without even a second thought. 

She walks away to pretend to reorganize the wrapped silverware and keep listening to the two men a little more, because why not? It’s 1:30 a.m. and it’s not like she has anything more exciting to focus on. 

“Can you drink at least some of the milkshake?” Mr. Slick is wheedling Klaus. “I feel like you haven’t eaten anything for, like, three days.” 

Klaus flips the placemat over, scribbles on the other side, and then pushes the paper across the table again. Mr. Slick nods. 

“Yes, I know your throat hurts. But ice cream should help, right? It can’t hurt.” 

Klaus rolls his eyes, but after all that he takes the milkshake straw into his mouth and sucks for a while. He stops in order to sneeze again, eyelashes fluttering, and then pushes the glass away. 

“Here, blow your nose,” Mr. Slick tells him, and shoves a napkin at him. Klaus does so, glaring across the table. If looks could talk, jeez. 

She startles a little as someone touches her elbow. It’s her manager. She reluctantly turns away from the saga of Klaus and Mr. Slick. 

“I finished rolling the silverware,” she says. “Is there anything else you needed?” 

  
There isn’t, really- her manager is leaving for the night and was just checking in. She only has three and a half hours left to fill now, so she hopes that the two men want to stay a while. 

It’s late, though, and Klaus is looking worse by the minute, almost- she can see him drooping, eyes flat and glassy. He’s put the pen down, and seems to be trying to stifle a cough. He fails, spectacularly, and Mr. Slick tsks at him. 

“Jesus, Klaus, that sounds fucking awful. Do you want more tea or something? Maybe they have some honey. That’s supposed to be good for your throat.” 

Klaus shrugs, and that seems to be enough of an answer. 

“Hey,” Mr. Slick says in her direction, a little loud. She trots over. Close-up he looks world-weary and concerned. “Could you get my brother some more tea? And do you have any honey?” 

Oh, so they are brothers. They don’t look anything alike, but maybe one of them was adopted. She feels a little embarrassed now for thinking that they were a couple, but how was she to know? 

When she returns with the tea and honey, Mr. Slick thanks her without looking up. 

“Here,” he says to his brother, tapping the mug with his fork. “If you drink the rest of this, Klaus, we can go home and I’ll let you have some NyQuil, how about that?” 

She loses track of them for a few minutes as a group of really drunk sorority girls come in all decked out in bad early 2000s fashion, a theme party gone long. It takes a while to get all of their orders straight, and when she checks back, the two men are gone. 

A bunch of crumpled napkins, a half-finished milkshake, and a crisp $20 bill underneath one of the mugs is the only evidence they’d ever been there. 

She finishes out her shift. The sorority girls tip horribly. 

She goes home and takes off her MEXICO shirt and her CHINA shoes and her VIETNAM pants and she dreams about one day going somewhere new. 

*****

**Author's Note:**

> For [painting](https://archiveofourown.org/users/painting/pseuds/painting), who enjoys dialogue-heavy fic and Klaus being under the weather. 
> 
> I'm on [tumblr](www.superstringtheory.tumblr.com) if you're into this. Come on over.


End file.
